


follow you into the dark

by bartonbones



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brotherly Angst, Dark Thor, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 13:59:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1472419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartonbones/pseuds/bartonbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki jumps from the Bifrost. Thor follows. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thanos is pleased.</p>
            </blockquote>





	follow you into the dark

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired by a norsekink prompt, but sadly i don't remember where it is, and it's too late now to find it. anyway, i hope you enjoy!

 

The door opens.

It’s large, thick, and metal. It drowns out all light, and sound, and warmth from the small room Loki sits in the corner of, and when it opens it means only one thing.

Pain.

Sometimes the creaking door makes its way for Chitauri guards (servants, slaves, captives? allies?) who will have their way with him. Touching, hurting, throwing and punching and whipping, until he screams and begs, uselessly and pathetically, and they laugh at what he has been reduced to.

It’s not nearly as bad as when their master—whose name they don’t speak, who introduces himself as Thanos as if the name should inspire fear in the hearts of who hears it, as if, if it doesn’t, it very soon will—comes. He doesn’t need to lay a hand on Loki, he never does.

He knows, can see, will bore and tunnel in Loki’s mind, find the faults and the shortcomings and broken places, will poke at them and laugh at them, mock them.

Pathetic, pathetic, worthless, deserving of only this, Thanos says, Thanos knows.

Coward for falling, for jumping, weak for cowering, worthless for being so weak.

So weak.

See, Thanos does not need to touch you to make you break. He does not need to laugh to show you his mirth and he does not need to speak to make you scream. He will come and make you beg for something as simple, as physical and trivial as wounds and bruises and pain.

He will make you wish for death, beg at her feet, and know that you do not deserve her.

So of course when the door creaks open, bathing the room in dusty, dirty blue light, Loki is relieved to see that it is only the guards. Only them and—something else, bigger than them, but not the silhouette of Thanos that is so painfully, unescapably burned in to Loki’s mind. Thanos would not lower his head so defeatedly. 

Thanos always comes alone.

So Loki is not that worried.

It can not be anything worse, not even when the figure raises its head.

It can not be anything worse, when it gasps—one that sounds human and familiar, not the mechanical chittering of the Chitauri, or the low, smooth tone of Thanos.

It can not be any worse, when;

“Loki?”

-

Thor’s explanation is so simple, so immeasurably Thor.

I followed you. 

Behind it, there is meaning, thoughtfulness, emotion.  

Behind it, there is love.

But all Loki’s mind can catch on to, all he can think, is that after years of following Thor into battles and hunts and everywhere he would not like to go just to be with him is why now, Thor, do you instead follow me?

Why would you follow anyone into Hell?

He hurts too much to ask.

 

-

Thor screams.

Not when the Chitauri come—though after days, (weeks, months? There is no sun or moon or light to tell when time has passed.) he stops fighting them.

 Physical hurts he suffers with bared teeth, invites on himself so that Loki is not touched.

 (“You fool,” Loki says, as Thor lies breathing as if through shattered, brittle lungs, unshed tears in his eyes and blood on his face like it were sweat. “Don’t protect me.”

And Thor laughs through his broken gasps, and says, “What else would I do?”)

Not even when Loki is hurt does Thor scream, though tears fall and he yells his rage, he does not scream.

Not until Thanos comes for them both.

He does not need to speak to make someone scream, he does not need words to break.

But he uses them regardless.

“You are new, little one,” he says, his voice low, full of mirth and threat and pain, pain pain. “Do you enjoy your company so far?”

Thor does not yet know to be afraid.

“You will release us,” Thor says. His voice would sound more threatening if it did not carry so much hurt, if it did not shake.

Thanos laughs, a harrowing sound.

“Oh, I think not,” he says. “I’m only just getting started with you and your brother.”

He says the familial title like a lie.

He puts a hand on Thor’s cheek. It is not even a slap and Loki still flinches, pulling his knees in closer and swallowing. He buries his head in them, arms wrapped around his lugged and curling, so tightly in on himself, it almost makes the world around him fade a little.

He feels pathetic.

But he doesn’t want to watch.

Thanos always knows what tortures to bring out of people, what pains them the most, what will tear their mind to pieces and make them beg. A part of Loki thinks, but Thor can’t have anything like that, because Thor is not weak, not like me. Thor has never been weak.

But Thor shuts his eyes, clenches his fists and opens his mouth and screams, and Thanos is too devious to create pains, only emphasizes, only draws out ones that have existed and scarred over, and tears them open once again until you beg for quiet, for dark, for pain, for an escape from your own mind.

So Thor must have something, must have hurts that Loki never knew of—never knew could exist—that Thanos finds easily.

When Thor slumps down, breathing shallow and tears in his eyes, Thanos laughs again.

 -

They don’t talk about why Loki jumped.

Loki does not even know if Thor knows what he is, when that alone would explain it.

It seems, Thor meant to ask, when he let go of Father’s hand, fell into the deep swirling blackness after him.

But that was before he came here.

And Loki can not blame him for not being able to force anything from his battered throat.

He wants to ask why Thor followed him.

Why Thor hasn’t cursed him for leading him here, yet.

Why Thor still looks, sometimes, when he’s not curled up hoping in vain for sleep or looking up at the ceiling as if it held an escape, like he was praying, why sometimes he looks like he loves Loki.

They don’t talk.

-

Mother lost both her sons.

Father watched both of them go, watched both of them choose to fall.

Sometimes, when Thanos pulls tortured memory after another from Loki’s tired head, he wonders if he hurt them more than they ever did him.

 -

“Loki, we have to.” Thor says. “I am so tired. Norns, I am tired, and you more so, and we can not stay like this.”

Loki would laugh if he thought he could.

He is slumped against the wall, and there are wounds that are bleeding, hurting, aching but it’s been so long since there hasn’t been. Thor is across him, and only if he is feeling particularly masochistic, or sentimental, does Loki actually look at him.

“So,” he says. His voice is quiet, barely above a whisper. It is hoarse, weathered down to nothing anymore. “Your mortal must not matter so much after all.”

If you would sacrifice her for our freedom, he thinks, if you would threaten her world to escape our anguish, if you would attack her home to save me.

Thor flinches, though, and Loki knows then that Thor has a bigger heart than he will ever have, because after so long hurting and after so much screaming he barely cares about anything.

“What choice do we have, Loki?”  His voice is so tired. “I can not watch you go through this, not anymore. Not when I can stop it.”

This time Loki does laugh. Hollow, horrible, strangled. But it’s a laugh, even if it borders on sobs because he never should have thought that Thor was worried about himself. Were it Thor just himself, he would suffer this alone and forever, just to keep safe his loved ones.

It’s not his pain he seeks so desperately an escape from, it’s Loki’s.

(Isn’t that one in the same?)

He laughs, because he knows he would not—could not—do the same.

Loki thinks, he doesn’t want to help Thanos. Thanos does not deserve him. He does not deserve Thor’s hammer, Thor’s justice, does not deserve to damage his soul. Loki is the lowest, he knows, he knows but Thor is not and Thor is his, and he wasn’t supposed to have followed, and Thanos shouldn’t warp that heart that Loki will never have.

The alternative, though, is—torture. Perhaps forever. Perhaps until even gods fade, until even the sacred corrupts.

Until they die.

Better a broken heart, than a broken body?

Loki knows the right answer.

He is not sure Thor does.

 -

Thanos is delighted.

It’s a wrong, innocent word, describing joy that is too pure and gentle for Thanos.

Thanos is pleased.

Between Loki’s magic and Thor’s hammer, Loki’s brain and Thor’s strength, Thanos knows they will win.

That’s a lie.

Thanos knows that he will win.

Loki does not know what will happen to Thor, when all the universes and their people cry to Thanos’s mercy, and they will all know he has none.

There will be no master but him, and then what will become of gods?

-

It burns.

The Earth goes down in flames, in fire and brimstone.

The mortals are pathetically easy to destroy, even when Loki is tired and Thor is—Thor is quiet.

He doesn’t mock when he kills them.

He doesn’t look pained.

He looks determined, he looks focused, he looks—

 

Broken.

His soul is broken, Loki thinks, broken and misshapen and healed entirely too wrong, until not even the shape is recognizable as his brother.

Loki was always meant for death. Thor courted war but Loki was born marked for death, to bring her, to feel her, to wish for her, there was no Loki without it.

It was the closest thing to a birthright he had.

But wars are fought to protect people, are noble sometimes, and that’s what Thor was meant for. He was not created, not meant, for such death and ruin, for destruction that meant nothing, that honoured nothing, that was worth nothing.

He was meant for protection.

War and death are close, work together at times.

But they are different.

Thor is different.

 

When the entire realm goes in flames, when Asgard faces Thanos’ armies, when Jotunheim rallies against and is destroyed, that’s the only thing Loki mourns.

  



End file.
